Photography – Swamp Blues – Lazy Lester in London

Posted on by Opher

Swamp Blues has always been a favourite of mine. I fell in love with an album called Swamp Blues in 1965. The names alone – Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Lightnin Slim, Lonesome Sundown and Whispering Smith seemed to say it all. They were recordings from the fabulous Excello Label produced by JD Jay Miller in Louisiana.

They were favourites of the Sixties Beat groups too – the Kinks, Stones and Yardbirds did their share.

I never got to see any of them perform. Most are dead now. But then Lazy Lester had a gig in London in 2012 and I took my younger son to see a legend)

I was fortunate enough not only to see a great concert but to crash a photo session and have a chat with the man himself. He was a bit cantankerous but he let me in and that is great. The man’s a legend – he not only produced the brilliant ‘I’m A Lover Not a Fighter’ himself but backed most of the other big names and even a lot of Country & Western Stars.

True to form he did a searing set but refused to play his only hit!

Here’s the photo’s I took.

DSC_0014 DSC_0015DSC_0022 DSC_0024 DSC_0026 DSC_0080 DSC_0081 DSC_0093 DSC_0023

Opher and Mike’s Radio Show – 50’s R&B.

Posted on by Opher

DSC_0017

Lazy Lester

Well I’ve just spent a great afternoon playing 50s R&B with Mike Green. He used to be the roadie and minder for Kossof and Free, Trower and Bad Company. He loves his music.

We had fun playing all the old songs and putting together our next radio show.

After much debate we put together the following track list with a view to:

a. What we both liked

b.Variety

Screaming Jay Hawkins

Rufus Thomas

Don and Dewey

Esquerita

Slim Harpo

Lazy Lester

Larry Williams

The Clovers

The Coasters

Tommy Tucker

Arthur Alexander

Little Willie John

Chuck Willis

Sam Cooke

We were heartbroken that we had to drop James Brown, Barrett Strong and the Contours.

There were a thousand other essentials that we did not get too. But we loved what we had got.

Our Psychedelic one goes out on radio tomorrow. Hope the people in intensive care enjoy it!

 

Featured book – Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses – pen pictures of my favourite Rock artists

Posted on by Opher

Featured Image -- 10952

I spent a lot of years teaching the History of Rock music in school and as an adult education class. It gave me the opportunity to play a lot of my favourite music, tell anecdotes, exchange views, listen to a lot of sounds I would not otherwise have listened to, and piece together the story of what had happened.

I started listening to Rock when I was ten years old – back in 1959. I haven’t stopped yet. I love it.

This is one of the books that came out of all that. I wanted to say a little bit about all the great Rock and R@B artists who had had such an impact on me. This is what came out – 195 tributes to all the artists and bands who’ve rocked my world. Some well known and some obscure. But they all rocked me. I’m sure there’d be a few in here you’ve never heard of.

If you would like to purchase this book or one of my others they are available on Amazon. Or just have a browse.

In the UK:

Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses :

 

 

In the USA:

Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses :

Kindle
$2.99 Read with Our Free App

 

Thank you for looking!

Opher and Mike’s Radio Programmes – 50’s/early 60’s R&B

Posted on by Opher

51knkyElf4L__AA160_ IMG_2115 IMG_2122 IMG_2129

I’ve just had a great afternoon with my mate Mike (ex-roadie for Free, Bad Company and Robin Trower) going through the rich vein of 50s R&B for our next radio programme.

It was hellishly difficult selecting a dozen tracks. We would have had trouble getting it down to a hundred.

So we missed out all the Chicago Blues for a future show, then all the girl groups, then the Doo-wop and the Rock ‘n’ Roll cross-over, then the New Orleans, then the females and finally came up with a group of artists which created a range of brilliant styles that is indicative of the amazing brilliance of the time. You can get an idea of the quality when I tell you that Ray Charles and James Brown both got dropped!

We’ve selected our sixteen artists with a view to range and variety. We wanted some familiar and some less so. We love them all:

Arthur Alexander

Barrett Strong

Chuck Willis

Clovers

Coasters

Contours

Don and Dewey

Esquerita

Larry Williams

Lazy Lester

Slim Harpo

Tommy Tucker

Screaming Jay Hawkins

Sam Cooke

Rufus Thomas

Little Willie John

Hopefully there will be some familiar names and a few less well known.

We’re now sorting out what we’re going to say and put the show together.

What do you think so far?

 

If you fancy trying one of my Rock Books they are available on Amazon:

Anecdote – My Arm Around a Rolling Stone

Posted on by Opher

IMG_2445

My Arm Around a Rolling Stone

I used to spend my Saturday afternoons with my arm around a Rolling Stone. Yes it is true. Then later we would strip naked and indulge in a hot bath before imbibing copious amounts of beer.

This was my early life as a hooker.

I used to play rugby. I was good at it. I not only played for my school first team for three years but I was picked to play for Esher Schoolboys. We went on tour and played Saracens, Wasps, Rosslyn Park, Richmond and London Irish. They were tough competitive matches. I played against the England Schoolboy’s hooker.

But for fun, when I was seventeen, I played for a local club called The University Vandals. The emphasis was more on enjoyment rather than winning. We were the rebel club that had broken away from the posh oiks. The games were hard and competitive but there was not the slickness or win-at-all-costs attitude that had pissed me off with Esher. The after match beer was as important as the match.

I was ideal as a hooker. I was small, nippy and quick. I could strike quickly and win that ball. I wasn’t afraid.

To give me the base to work from I needed two sturdy, burly props. They had to be big, solid and build like brick shit-houses. I was lucky. I had two. Ian and Bill. They were as tough as they come and their job was to give me the platform to strike for that ball. They took it seriously. They were twice my size and they looked after me.

Ian had another life. He was an exceptional pianist.

Where his craggy looks and large squat frame did not look the image for Pop Stardom they were ideal as a rugby union prop forward.

Ian Stewart was the pianist with the Rolling Stones. Andrew Loog Oldham had taken one look at him and decided that, with his craggy jaw and short hair, there was no way the teenage girls were going to want to rip his clothes off. He might be a brilliant pianist but he did not suit the image. He was dropped. Except he wasn’t. He did not appear in the credits. He was not officially part of the band, he was not mentioned or photographed with the long-hair, surly crew. The albums were devoid of his image or name. Yet Ian played on those albums. He even accompanied the band, acting as a driver and roadie and playing piano invisibly from the wings.

Perhaps that was just the way he liked it? He was anonymous. He was able to play the music he loved without all the restrictions of fame. He would never have been able to play rugby on Saturday afternoon if he was ‘one of the boys’.

I drifted off to college and left my rugby in my past.

I no longer spent my Saturday afternoons being in a tight clinch with a Rolling Stone.

It wasn’t until a good twenty years later that I noticed that Ian had formed his own band. He was touring and playing the R&B music that he loved. The band were called Rocket 88. They played in Hull and I was going to see them. Not only were they playing that great R&B music I loved but I had hopes of seeing Stu and having a natter about the days of the vandals.

Something came up and I missed it. But that was OK. I’d catch him next time.

Except that sometimes there is no next time. Stu died prematurely of a heart attack. I never got to have that talk and share another beer.

Stu was a great cheerful man with a warm heart. I have fond memories. It is a shame I did not get to see him again.

One lesson to be learnt is that we should always seize our opportunities while we can. We might not get them again.

Rock Routes – Sixties Soul – An extract from the book.

Posted on by Opher

Rock Routes

The US 1960s Soul Scene

Soul music, as a continuation of the US R&B tradition, really took off in 1964 and became a huge commercial success partly due to the need for good dance music in the new 1960s Discotheques.

The term Soul was attached to this musical style due more to the vocal intensity and emotional content of the music rather than any ubiquitous style. This intense vocalisation had its roots in Gospel and was first introduced in secular R&B in the work of precursors such as Ray Charles, Little Willie John, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Clyde McPhatter. It was apparent in both uptempo numbers and soulful ballads. The centre of Soul was on the West Coast Atlantic Label with its Southern subsidiary the infamous Stax label in Memphis. From 1964 onwards the charts became full of artists producing the sound that became known as Soul. These included Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Lee Dorsey, Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MGs, Percy Sledge, Carla Thomas, Joe Tex, Arthur Conley and even the Blues guitarist Albert King.

This continued into the 1970s with artists such as Brook Benton, Betty Wright, Archie Bell & the Drells and the Detroit Spinners.

Soul was a huge commercial success and gave rise to two other major genres of black R&B with Disco and Funk. In Britain it gave rise to the Northern Soul Scene with its athletic dancing and in the 1980s it underwent a renaissance with New Wave Soul.

Throughout its history Soul has produced some of the most dynamic music and performances but has also tended to suffer from commercial exploitation. The emotional rawness of this dynamic Gospel tinged music endeared it to British Mods and many US Soul artists were brought across the Atlantic to perform in British clubs where they received rapturous support. Their success also stimulated the rise of a number of British Mod Soul Bands such as the Alan Bown Set, the Action, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band and Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. These bands, while copying the material of the US stars produced a type of music with a different feel to it.

The huge success of soul drew many established R&B artists into adopting the style including such stars as Lee Dorsey, Little Richard and James Brown.

Without doubt the greatest Soul Artist is Otis Redding. He started out as a Little Richard impersonator before further developing the anguished emotional intensity that we associate with him on numbers such as ‘Pain in my heart’. His stage act was the epitome of high energy Soul in the manner of James Brown. He would do crazy dancing and run on the spot while tearing at his clothes in a frenzy of emotion. His amazing vocal prowess is well displayed on numbers like ‘That’s how strong my love is’, ‘Respect’, Satisfaction’, and ‘Fa fa fa fa fa fa (sad song)’. Unfortunately his career was brought to a sudden end when he was killed in an air crash in late 1967. ‘(Sitting on the) Dock of the bay’ was released following his death and became his biggest hit. This came at the time when he was not only at his peak of performance and recording but was breaking through to the counter-culture audiences who were not usually drawn to Soul being more into psychedelia and acid rock. There is no telling where this would have led.

If Otis was the King of Soul then Aretha was the Queen. Having started out as a Gospel vocalist she was encouraged to move into secular R&B by none other than Sam Cooke who had been knocked out by the power and beauty of her voice. She signed to Columbia in 1960 but it was not until she signed to Atlantic in 1966 and got the full Soul treatment that she broke through. She went on to have a series of enormous hits with numbers like ‘Respect’, Baby I love you’, ‘I never loved a man’, ‘Chain of fools’ and ‘Think’.

The Atlantic Stax label was the undisputed home of Soul. This was primarily due to the fantastic backing and writing expertise that was coming from the house band Booker T & the MGs (Memphis Group). They were heard on the recordings of most of the great Soul singers including Otis, Aretha, Sam & Dave, William Bell and Rufus Thomas as well as having a big hand in writing many of their best numbers. Booker T & the MGs went on to have a number of hits in their own right – ‘Green Onions’, ‘Chinese checkers’, ‘Hip Hug Her’, Soul limbo’ and ‘Time is tight’.

Other Atlantic stars included Solomon Burke – the King of Rock & Soul – who employed a preaching style of vocal on numbers such as ‘If you need me’; Sam & Dave, who were a dynamic vocal duo similar to Don and Dewey, they had hits with hard driving numbers – ‘You don’t know like I know’, ‘I take what I want’, ‘Hold on I’m coming’ and ‘ Soul man’ as well as softer Soul ballads – ‘When something is wrong with my baby’; Wilson Pickett, who started in the 1950s with a vocal group called the Falcons signed to Stax in 1964 and had a string of hits with high energy singles like ‘In the midnight hour’, ‘Mustang Sally’, ‘Land of a 1000 dances’, ‘Funky Broadway’, ‘6345789’ and ‘Don’t fight it’; Percy Sledge, whose powerful clear vocals secured him great success with ‘When a man loves a woman’ and ‘Warm and tender love’; King Curtis, who was a session saxophonist who had previously played on the Coasters hits ‘Yakety Yak’ and ‘Charlie Brown’, become part of the house band with both the MGs and the Markeys as well as having hits in his own right with ‘Memphis Soul Stew’ and ‘Teasin’; Eddie Floyd, who started out with Wilson Pickett in the Falcons and produced the classic ‘Knock on wood’; Arthur Conley, who gained the title of ‘Crown Prince of Soul’, for the energetic stage act he produced using a similar stage craft to Otis on uptempo numbers such as ‘Show me’ before giving up music in 1970 to become a real preacher; Patti Labelle & the Bluebelles, who started as a female Doo-Wop band in the 1950s before signing to Atlantic in 1965 and had hits with ‘All or nothing’, ‘Over the rainbow’, ‘Groovy kind of love’ and ‘take me for a little while’; the Staples Singers, who started out as a 1950s Gospel group before joining Stax in 1968 and had a number of hits with ‘Respect yourself’, ‘Be what you are’ and ‘You’ve got to earn it’.

Artists on other labels also broke into the Soul scene including Lee Dorsey, the Impressions and Gladys Knight & the Pips. Lee started out in the 1950s with R&B hits such as ‘Ya-Ya’ and ‘Do Re Mi’ before joining up with the Amy/Mala/Bell complex in the mid 1960s and having Soul hits with ‘Get out of my life’, ‘Confusion’, ‘Holy cow’, ‘Ride your pony’ and ‘Working in a coal mine’. The Impressions featured Curtis Mayfield and had a number of Soul hits in the 1960s with ‘You must believe’, ‘I’m so proud’, ‘Amen’, ‘Keep on pushing’ and ‘People get ready’. They then moved into Black Consciousness with numbers like ‘This is my country’, ‘Choice of colours’ and ‘Mighty mighty spade and whitey’. Gladys Knight & the Pips produced some Soul sounds with numbers like ‘I heard it through the grapevine’.

Rock Music Genres – Fifties Doo-Wop.

Posted on by Opher

penguins The Penguins

1950s Doo-Wop

I was particularly smitten by the similarity between Doo-Wop and the African tradition of acapella groups. In Africa it goes right back to its tribal roots with groups of young men, shuffling, swaying and stamping in rhythm and singing in harmony without any instrumentation. I saw this on many street corners as I went around in Cape Town. It was interesting to see how the tradition was continued in black America in the 1950s. It was common to find groups of youths on street corners doing a similar thing.

As there were no instruments the voices were used to provide that backing. As the main singer gave vent the rest of the group harmonised with bass and harmony and largely nonsense words and sounds to create an intricate arrangement. The term Doo-Wop was not really applied to the style until the end of the fifties. Before that it was seen as another R&B style.

The popularity of the style was obvious. Young blacks suffered a lot of unemployment and there was little money. They had time, talent and no instruments. It was something you could do creatively with your friends that got you attention from the girls, respect from your friends and had the potential to earn money.

It first started up in the 1940s in cities like Chicago and New York and soon became a phenomenon. The earliest successful groups were the Ink Spots and Mills Brothers who, along with others, took it into the charts in the late forties and even reached white audiences and had television exposure.

In the early fifties there were a whole range of Doo-wop groups with names based on birds such as the Ravens, Orioles, Swallows, Robins, Flamingoes, Larks and Penguins. Some of the harder R&B groups had more instrumentation and a touch of Rock as with the Clovers, Hank Ballad and the Midnighters, the Cadillacs, Impalas and Bill Ward and the Dominoes.

By the end of the fifties it was having great success with bands like the Platters, Little Anthony and the Imperials and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

It was incorporated into the Rock scene along with other R&B and elements of Doo-wop regularly find their way into Rock Music as with the backing on many Roy Orbison songs.

The style went on to develop with the highly successful Coasters and Drifters and even into the sixties with the Four Tops.

Other minority groups got in on the sound with Hispanic and Italian groups leading the way. Groups like Dion and the Belmonts and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

Doo-Wop has played a big part in the evolution of Rock Music.

Opher & Mike’s Radio Show on Merseybeat.

Posted on by Opher

If you like Rock Music then you might like this Radio Show we put together on the subject of Merseybeat. We recorded it in a studio after having worked on it for about a year. We’ve got about 75 of these hour long shows scripted out.

Mike used to be the Roadie with Free, Bad Company and Robin Trower (among others) and is a bit of a Rock nut just like me!!

We really enjoyed doing this programme and organising the tracks. Lots of people have said how much they enjoyed it.

Next week we’re going to record ‘Psychedelia’.

We looked around for a radio station that might be interested in taking the format further but have not come up with a hit yet.

If you have any suggestions or comments we’d love to hear from you!

Otis Redding – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.

Posted on by Opher

Otis Redding

Aretha was the Queen of Soul and Otis was the undisputed King. Nobody else came near. Otis ruled the Stax stable and Stax was the studio making the sound. Otis was so powerful that his voice stripped paint. If a butterfly’s wing flapping in South America could set off hurricanes in the Caribbean then Otis must have been responsible for the flattening of hundreds of millions of square feet of forest.

Otis not only sang, he wrote songs and helped create that production sound that was the hallmark of Stax studio on McLemore and College in Memphis. Otis worked closely with Steve Cropper, the Bar-Keys and Booker T & the MGs to hone those songs to perfection.

On stage the sweat sprayed off him as he put every ounce of energy into the performance. He would wrench every shred of agonised emotion out of every syllable, stamp and plead, beseech and implore. It wasn’t so much a musical performance as an emotional outburst.

This was real Soul. I haven’t been about to come to terms with all the soft new modern-day stuff that poses as Soul. After having heard Otis do the real thing all that other new stuff sounds insipid and pales. It’s not real Soul. What Otis brought to the table came with all the passion of Gospel and the heat and intensity of early sixties R&B. Otis lived every beat and poured his heart and soul out through that great voice.

At that time Soul was the commercial music of the charts and dance halls while the largely White sixties Underground was focussed on Acid Rock, Psychedelia, Heavy Metal and Progressive Rock. This was the age where commercial was a sell out to the establishment. Commercial stank.

Yet Otis was so dynamic and inspiring and had such integrity that he had begun building bridges and making the cross-over. His performance at the Monterey Festival blew everyone away and sent them screaming for more.

It got no further than that. Shortly after his triumph he was tragically killed in a plane crash. It left us all sitting on the dock of that bay.

Aretha Franklin – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.

Posted on by Opher

aretha-franklin-27121744-500-375

Aretha is and probably always will be the First Lady of Soul. I can’t see anybody on the horizon to challenge her now that the oommpphhh has gone out of Soul Music. Those golden years at Atlantic with Booker T & the MGs as the house-band were something special and extraordinary. It was the bringing together of black and white musicians to create something different with a lot of power, precision and style. That was almost unthinkable in the heavily racially segregation of the Deep South in Memphis. Yet it happened and it worked. There was an earthiness to the music they produced which augmented the powerful performances of Aretha, Otis Redding, Joe Tex, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett. That energy and raw sound was unique to that era. I don’t know if it was down to the equipment, the physical nature of the Stax studio, the musicianship, the ambience, that interracial harmony or the production techniques. I suspect it was the combination of all those and a few other magical ingredients as well. Whatever it was, it suited Aretha to the ground.

Aretha was a small lady with an enormous voice. She could really belt out the songs with personality, feeling and a range that was beyond all others. She came in, like so many, from the Gospel side, singing in the Baptist church, and then went into secular R&B. It wasn’t until she teamed up with Stax that she began getting into her stride. What a stride that was. Her version of ‘Respect’ epitomised the power of her performance. She demanded respect and she got it.

Aretha not only helped break down the racial barriers in getting black music played on white radio stations but she also set a standard for feminism. She was no cute bit of fluff to be dolled up by the label. She exuded stature and power and was someone to be reckoned with. With songs like ‘Respect’, ‘Think’ and ‘You make me feel like a natural woman’ she made her case for the equality of females at a time when feminism hadn’t yet been invented. Aretha had that pride that demanded attention. She was a feisty woman in the best sense of the word.

The First Lady of Soul still reigns supreme.